Category Archives: National Security

05.12.16
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“Until we find out what’s going on” Continues To Be Official Trump Policy

 

Pictured: John Kerry?

Remember when John Kerry was permanently labeled a “flip-flopper” thanks to a smart Bush team and an enabling press, who, with few exceptions, loved the label, adopted it, and breathlessly discussed it? It was fine to discuss his positions and character, of course, but any normal political act was instantly labeled another “flip-flop” by a press almost sexually enamored of a swaggering war President.

That’s normally how things work. Labels get stuck because the press is lazy and people easily accept quick caricatures in place of actual characterization. Bush was dumb (instead of arrogantly incurious), Gore was boring and a liar (instead of neither), McCain was grouchy (true!), Obama was aloof and arrogant (kind of true), etc. That’s the way it usually works.

That’s why one of the more genuinely frightening things about this election is that it has revealed, once and for all, the power of pure thuggishness in the face of any rationality. It’s why no labels have really stuck on Donald Trump. The rage he channels is enough to flatten the incredible contradictions, reversals, and sheer ignorance that underpins his campaign, like a boiling river leveling a hapless and god-beseeching floodplain town. His position on terrorism, or rather “terrorism”, makes this clear.

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04.28.16
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“At least four other toddlers in the U.S. found guns and fatally shot themselves last week.”

In the seven days that ended Tuesday, in addition to the death of Ms. Price, a 3-year-old in Georgia, a 3-year-old in Louisiana, a 2-year-old in Missouri and a 2-year-old in Indiana fatally shot themselves; a 4-year-old in Texas shot and wounded a family member; a 16-year-old in California killed a 14-year-old friend in a shooting that officials called accidental; a 15-year-old in Texas accidentally shot and wounded a 16-year-old friend; and a 13-year-old in Indiana accidentally shot and wounded herself. –NYTimes

The news reads like dispatches from some terrible dystopia, a darkly comic novel of Saunders-like horror, the national epidemic of toddler suicide. It’s a surreal thrum of agony, this story of a land numbed by TV but flooded with cheap weaponry. The madness is anesthetized by politics and dim 18th-century chestpounding. It should be fiction, but it is news.It is the wire service from Hell, with each clause dryly containing immeasurable sadness.

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Read more about a gnawing national madness…

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04.25.16
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The Churchill Bust “Scandal” Was Peak Rightwing Dumbshow

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Inspiring, in a “melted lush” sort of way.  (Image from The Independent)

Boris Johnson, the weird-haired and meaningless Mayor of London with a certain oddball Tory charm (he did have the best description of the 2012 Olympics: As I write these words there are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade immortalised by Canaletto. They are glistening like wet otters and the water is plashing off the brims of the spectators’ sou’westers. The whole thing is magnificent and bonkers.), helpfully revived one of the dumbest single controversies of the whole Obama Administration: the Bust of Churchill. To recap, George W. Bush, for whom Churchill ranked as the finest British leader (though if he could name any beyond Thatcher and Blair, I’d be stunned), was gifted a bust of Winston Churchill early in his Presidency, and he kept it on his desk for inspiration. Obama gave it back, or moved it, or something: the point was, he didn’t keep it on his desk. We finally got to the bottom of it this week.

What’s nice is that it reminded us of how ludicrous the opposition to Obama has been, and how ungrounded in reality the bulk of it is. In retrospect, it set the template for all the idiocy regarding his Presidency.

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04.19.16
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A Death in Cameroon: Samantha Power And The Terrible Contradictions of US Power

The child was only seven, rushing to see the excitement. A US convoy was rolling through a Cameroonian village, led by Samantha Power, who was bravely going to meet with victims of the rapacious cruelty of Boko Haram. She was showing the soft face of US power. But the convoy was rushing, as convoys have to do when there are enemies all around, and the child was distracted, or over-excited, and the drivers sure had their eyes peeled for attacks, not for children. There was a collision, and a 7-yr-old was dead.

This was not intentional. This was not because the child was mistaken for a terrorist. There was grief and pain throughout the convoy, especially for Samantha Power, who had to balance the knowledge that the child would be alive if it weren’t for her visit; but then, who knows if her visit could make things better, including the life of that child, if it only weren’t for that hideous moment, that instant where fate forced the action, that terrible collision of plated steel and fragile flesh. Maybe if they were a little further to the side of the road, or someone had grabbed the child, or if the convoy wasn’t forced to rush through dangerous territory, the child would have remembered that day as the one where life started to get better, because America finally lifted itself to help the fight against violent militants. Maybe this would have been a day she talked about for generations.

That’s the horrible contradiction of American power in a changing world. The conflicts that we try to solve can’t be solved merely with the military, even if that is our default. But even when showing the soft face, we have to always be on the lookout for danger, and have to act as both the powerful and the persued, the rifle-toting hunstman and the quivering prey. We stumble with some good intentions, and some ill, into conflicts we barely understand, and leave pain as well as medicine and food and hope.

The problem is, that might be the inevitable outcome of being the last real traditional power in a changing world. Conflicts are both local and international, driven by internal ideologies and transnational ideas. They are old ideas being revived by new technologies, and mostly are a product of a global system that is slowly being replaced. The nation-state is no longer the primary actor. What we’re seeing is the final stages of collapse by the old empires, who created transnational conglomerations that broke up into nation states, and now are chafing under that. We see that in the Caucuses, in the Middle East, in Africa, in Canada and Latin America, and even in the American southwest. Some areas, like Western Europe, have been trying to go the other way, but even that is showing strain.

This isn’t to say we live in uniquely perilous times. Everyone wants to think they are in the most dangerous and interesting and hopefully end times (it lessens the agony of death if you think everyone is going with you). But we are in a very long period of transition, and it is doubtful that an old-school power like the US, especially one that has such a messy and possibly unworkable democracy, can handle it. Certainly not the way we are now. We’re too big, and too unwieldly. We carry too much baggage, and we don’t know which has clothes and which one has the bomb.

Samantha Power is a good person trying to make sense out of a dangerous world. She doesn’t deserve the guilt she must feel over this tragic death. But that is also the price we pay. When trying to impose and old order on a world where that order is decaying, there will be collateral damage. It’s the inveitable price of empire, but, as always, the cost is never borne by the empire itself. Whether or not we can sustain being one is a question that our leaders have to ask. It’s unfortunate very few have the courage to do so. Until that happens, we’re a blind convoy, hurtling through unknown jungles, and praying we get out without trampling over those we propose to save.

04.12.16
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AQAP Still Has Eyes On The Future

On Friday, Yara Bayoumy, Noah Browning and Mohammed Ghobari filed an amazing Reuters investigative report about al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and how they were erecting a true mini-state in the south of Yemen: keeping the peace, collecting taxes, doing the roadwork, punishing the rich for stealing from generations of the poor, and so forth. They were levying tributes from ships, much like a real country. It’s a tremendous read, and a powerful look at how smart terrorist organizations work

AQAP has flown under the radar since the terrifying rise of ISIS, and have even been relegated to the back of Yemeni news thanks to the Huthi rise and the Saudi invasion. But they have never stopped organizing, and most importantly, have never stopped learning lessons.

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Image from Reuters.

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03.29.16
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EgyptAir Hijacking and Our Weird Formulation on Terrorism

 

A man believed to be the hijacker of the EgyptAir Airbus A-32

Pictured: Not a terrorist. Image from AFP-Getty via BBC

 

Thankfully, the EgyptAir hijacking turned out to just be a guy with a fake suicide vest who may or may not have been distraught about a woman. This was handled with what I can only believe to be typical Cypriot humor.

Earlier, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades had responded to a reporter’s question about whether the hijacker was motivated by romance, by laughing and saying: “Always there is a woman involved.”

That aside, and the “troubling questions” about security we’re told the incident begs, there has been a strange formulation floating around all day. I first saw it in a Times “Morning Briefing”, but you’ve undoubtedly seen something similar. “A hijacker told the pilot he had explosives and threatened to detonate them, officials said, but he may have been motivated by personal factors, not terrorism.”

That’s an odd way to put it, and revealing. Yes, there were no political motivations, which of course means it isn’t terrorism. If he blew himself up, of course, it wouldn’t have mattered to anyone involved. Being killed is being killed. It’s the same kind of excuse we have in this country for being solemn for a few minutes after a mass shooting, telling each other that to talk about guns is to “politicize” it, and then going on our way- unless the shooter screams “Allah!” while pulling the trigger.

The San Bernardino shooters had no real connection to ISIS, no more than I do. They just were inspired by them, but there are a million factors that go into why someone decides to kill. They do it for any reasons, whether they are a recruit from Belgium or Adam Lanza or just someone who wants to pick a wolf costume and chooses ISIS, because it just happens to fit perfectly.

That’s why it is strange to say “motivated by personal factors”, and not terrorism. People join terrorist groups for personal factors, because they are angry or lost or feel small, and can be pushed over the edge from despair into inhuman violence by skilled recruiters and peer pressure. Some, yes, are just sociopaths or criminals, and a handful are true believers- but even among them, it is “personal factors”.

We treat terrorism as a free-floating evil, capitalizing the theological construct and applying it to humans, which weirdly robs people of their agency. We don’t see terrorism as an earthly phenomenon with earthly reasons, born from the same violent impluses that have led men to be wolf to men since they first realized that pain wasn’t something that was just felt- it could be inflicted.

Until we decide that we have to treat this as an actual human event, and not a mythological evil, there is no way to minimize its destructive power, or to lead people away. Saying “it’s not terrorism; it must just be a combination of sickness and desperation” is a perfect exercise in missing the point entiely.

03.23.16
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Brussels and The Price of Modernity

“Always on the run, not knowing what to do any more, being looked for everywhere, not being safe any longer and that if he waits around any longer he risks ending up next to the person in a cell.”

–From the will of Ibrahim El Bakraoui, Brussels terrorist

Ripped from context, the will of one of the (still-living) murderers from Brussels could be taken from the diary or blog or hastily scribbled and terrible poetry of any mildly disaffected 21st-century youth. It is of course more direct- the brothers who carried out these attacks and their companions had reasons to feel they were being hunted, after the nearby capture of one of the Paris attackers, but the sentiment rings true, globally, and it is a reason why terrorism is the dominant issue of our time. It is the sharp end of the modern condition, one marked by alienation, disconnection, and a sense of sliding across the surface of something vast, mysterious, and implacable.

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03.22.16
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Ted Cruz Makes Clear How Much He Hates America

There aren’t really any words.

“We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant Al Qaeda or ISIS presence,” the Texas senator said in a statement. “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”

It’s a mark of the wild danger howling through the country that this kind of loose and dangerous talk drips easily from a major candidate. What happened in Brussels is a horror, and it is the kind we’ll be living with for many years. There is no easy solution (more on this forthwith), but there is also no question that this kind of weaponized rhetoric only serves the cruel forces of Islamic militancy.

What’s clear is that Ted Cruz’s major problem with America is that it is, well, America. This is clear in a further part of his statement.

“The days of the United States voluntarily surrendering to the enemy to show how progressive and enlightened we are at an end,” he said. “Our country is at stake.”

The “voluntarily surrendering” is inflammatory and reality-ignoring and dangerous enough (were it true, you’d think Cruz would have the stones to pursue impeachment). It’s the second part that really captures his whole program: he has nothing but contempt for the Enlightenment values the country was founded upon. He is directly saying that since our country is at stake, everything that makes America what it is should be thrown over the side. It’s a sneering yawp at modernity itself.

He means it, too. He can’t really believe that ISIS is an existential threat. But the march of progress is an existential threat to his perverted value system. The country is at stake only because atavistic reactionaries like Ted Cruz aren’t in complete control anymore. He wants a grim mix of plutocracy and theocracy, and fears that he won’t be able to get it. Attacks in Europe give him the opportunity to promote his real program: the erasure of post-Puritan progress.

Combined with Trump’s lunatic ravings about borders and shutting it down “until we figure out what’s going on” (an off-the cuff remark that was made into a somehow-viable policy), it is clear that the GOP has zero interest in the threat of radical Islam other than its use for them in their endless culture war. Everything is a symbol, a fetish object for their retrograde obsessions, and the deaths of dozens of Europeans is merely a cudgel to win the next battle.

03.22.16
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Ted Cruz Is A Fanatical Liar, Part Who Can Count

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Gawker noted this interview Ted Cruz had about yesterday in which the somewhat controversial notions of one of his senior advisors came up.

“Frank Gaffney is someone I respect,” Ted Cruz said Monday, defending his foreign policy advisor. Frank Gaffney is a serious thinker.” Frank Gaffney thinks that President Barack Obama, Governor Chris Christie, and longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin are part of a secret Muslim conspiracy.

“I don’t know what he said in 2009,” Cruz said, after Blitzer read him a quote about Obama being America’s first Muslim president. “I just read it to you,” Blitzer said. “I don’t have the full context,” Cruz said.

To say you don’t know this about Gaffney is, without a doubt, an absolute lie. There is literally no way not to know it. It’s, like, the only thing about the guy. It’s his whole essence: implacable hostility toward anything Muslim and wild conspiracies about the secretly powerful role that Muslims have in American life, the proof being the bombing campaigns we’re running all over the Muslim world, apparently. It’s all there is about Gaffney.  Saying you aren’t aware of what he said is like hiring Sammy Sosa as a hitting coach and not only saying that you weren’t aware of the steroid thing, but you didn’t even hear about all these home runs. “He just interviewed really well!”

Of course, the real lie in this is “Frank Gaffney is a serious thinker.”

Bringing someone like Gaffney in is a sign that you are going to have a team of fabulists and messianic, people who desperately wish they could be at war with an existential foe like the Nazis (although not doing to actual fighting, god forbid). They’ll blow up a real and serious threat to an unrecognizable proportion to live out their McArthur fantasies.

It’s a sign of the Republican Party today that one of the only two possible candidates bringing in someone like Gaffney elicits little more than a shrug. It’s an even stronger tell that the party has gone completely insane that in order to “pivot to the middle” even slightly, to appeal to mainstream Americans, Ted Cruz knows he has to straight-up lie regarding the only thing that matters about a top advisor.

 

03.11.16
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The Obama Foreign Policy Doctrine: Tragic Radicalism

Of every way President Obama frustrates opponents and supporters alike, it is his stubborn refusal to fit into a narrative. In the Age of Takes, trying to piece together a grand theory based on one or two stories is to be quickly refuted by another narrative. Think of the glee the winger press had when Obama turned out not to be great at throwing a baseball- he’s weak, un-American, etc- but conspiciously silent about his basketball prowess.

This is especially true in foreign policy (though honestly, I could write “especially true in domestic policy” as well: he’s an tyrant, or a weakling, or a compromiser, or a canny operator, or someone who keps getting played). Obama’s critics on the left and on the right see two vastly different Presidents. On the left he is essentially a war criminal, reckless with drones and all-too-willing to engage in wars on every continent, vastly overstepping his power. On the right, he is the weak and feckless appeaser, letting our enemies run roughshod over us, at best. At worst, he is deliberately handing over the store.

In a long piece based on a series of interviews at The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, who for years has been kind of Obama’s foriegn policy father-confessor, tries to piece together some kind of doctrine that goes above the fabled “don’t do dumb shit”. If there is a grand narrative of the Obama years, it is someone with a tragic sense, who believes that people can be rational if the conditions are right, but who have a wild atavistic past just lurking in the background, and can revert to irrational behavior at any moment. That our first African-American president seems to be guided by Conrad- “we live in the flicker”- is material enough for generations of grad students to parse out.

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